“Yeah,” he replies, nodding thoughtfully. “Better late than never, I thought.”
I can’t hide my excitement anymore.
“Can I see Mum when you give it to her?”
I see a flash of pain in Dad’s eyes, but he quickly tries to hide this.
“Good idea,” he says, forcing a smile onto his face. He fastens the clasp and then slips the necklace into his pocket. “It’s been a while since we last went to see her together.”
—
It’s a sunny day, but I can’t get rid of the cold in my bones as I stare down at the gravestone.
IN LOVING MEMORY OF
CHARLOTTE ELIZABETH BRIGHT
Dad hangs the necklace around the neck of the angel that’s carved at the head of the stone. Another stupid universe where Mum is dead, and I don’t even know why. Cancer. Car accident. I can’t even bring myself to ask. I thought that this time it’d be different. I keep biting my lip, but I can’t stop myself from crying anymore.
“It’s OK,” Dad says, putting his arm around my shoulder. “I still miss her too. I think that’s why I wanted to finish the necklace for her—even after all these years. While I was making it, it let me forget—just for a while—that she wasn’t still here.”
He pulls a tissue out of his pocket and pushes it into my hand.
“It’s not fair,” I sniff, wiping my nose with a shudder.
“I know it’s not fair,” Dad says, “but as long as we stick together like she told us to, it’ll be OK.”
A cold wind whips in from the moor, cutting through the graveyard. I shiver as the shadow of St. Thomas’s spire dips closer to the gravestone.
“When your mum died, I felt lost,” Dad continues, his arm hugging me tight to protect me from the cold. “The only thing I could do was work every hour of every day and try to forget. That was when there was still enough coal to mine, of course. But you helped me face up to things, Albie. You made me see that life was still worth living—even without your mum.”
Turning my head, I look up at Dad’s face and see the tears shining in his eyes.
“Top of the class; brainy like your mum. She’d be so proud of you, Albie. Just like I am.”
I don’t know what to say. I’m not the Albie he thinks I am. But with his arm around my shoulder, for the moment I just don’t care.
The wind’s getting stronger now, whipping the heads of the flowers that Dad’s laid on Mum’s gravestone.
“There’s a good wind getting up,” he says, glancing out over the moor. “How about we head back to the workshop and make a start on that kite I’ve been promising you.”
—
Back in the shed, Dad shows me how to make a kite. He gets two long, thin sticks, and I help him glue them together in the shape of a cross. Wrapping one piece of string around the middle for reinforcement, Dad threads another piece through the notches at the ends of the sticks to make a frame for the kite. Then we dig out old newspapers from the recycling and use these to cover up the frame.
I read some of the front-page headlines as we stick the newspapers down. ENERGY CRISIS. NO COAL NO GO. POWER CUTS STRIKE. It doesn’t sound like things are going so well in this parallel world. Maybe this is what Dad was talking about when he said he was only working three days a week. But I don’t have time to find out more now as Dad fixes a ball of string to the frame.
“I think it’s ready,” he says, holding up the newspaper kite. “Let’s go up on the moor to give it a test flight.”
Even as I’m carrying it up the hill, the wind is tugging at the kite, eager to set it free. While we’re walking, Dad’s asking me all sorts of questions about the school trip, my friends, and what I want to do for the rest of the weekend.
My head’s spinning. I don’t know what the Albie in this universe would say. He’s still in London on a school trip with Class 6, and I feel like I’m just borrowing his dad for the day. But the thing is, deep down, I’m kind of starting to wish I could stay.
At the top of the hill I keep hold of the string, and Dad runs to launch the kite into the air. As soon as he lets it go, the kite soars into the sky like a newspaper plane. I quickly let out more string as it twists, turns, and tugs, the kite flying higher with each fresh gust of wind that sweeps across the moor. I can see St. Thomas’s Church from here, Dad joining me to watch as the kite soars above the spire.
“Keep a tight hold, Albie,” he says, lifting his hand to shield his eyes against the sun. “Never let her go.”
And I think of Mum and how that’s the one thing I won’t ever do.
—
I sit in the kitchen watching Dad as he makes us cheese on toast.
I’m tired but happy. After flying the kite for an hour or two, we headed back to the workshop, where Dad decided we should build a life-size Transformer out of cardboard boxes, turning it from a car to a robot to a plane and back again. He even got out an old-fashioned camcorder, and we spent the rest of the afternoon making a movie as I pretended to rescue planet Earth from evil robot invaders.
Don’t worry, I made sure that the cardboard box with the quantum banana experiment in it was kept safely out of the way. I asked Dad to help me take it up to my bedroom, telling him it was for a school project I was working on. He asked if he could help me with it, but I thought it would be a bit weird if I started explaining quantum physics to my dad.
But all the time we were together, we just kept on talking—Dad answering any question I asked, just like Mum used to. I’ve never had so much fun with him before. It’s like he’s had a personality transplant in this parallel universe and swapped brains with the dad out of that book Mrs. Forest gave me to read, Danny the Champion of the World.
Now, as the light outside the kitchen window fades, Dad shovels the cheese on toast onto two plates, Marmite melted in with the cheese on mine, just how I like it.
“You’re a bit quiet, Albie,” he says, carrying the plates over to the kitchen table. “What’s on your mind?”
This is when I decide to stop worrying about what the Albie in this universe would say, and instead start to tell Dad everything. How Wesley MacNamara always punches me in exactly the same place on my arm so that it hurts a little bit more every time. How Victoria Barnes calls me lamebrain, and how my best friend Kiran wants to send the first of something into space but he doesn’t know what to choose. And Dad just listens to me, asking questions now and then before saying something that makes everything seem all right as we eat our cheese on toast.
I’m just about to tell him how I’m actually an Albie from a parallel universe, how I’ve already met my evil twin as well as a female version of myself, and how I thought I could use quantum physics to find Mum again but I can’t seem to get it right. But before I have the chance to speak, all the lights go out.
“Is it a power cut?” I ask.
I can hear Dad scrabbling around in the kitchen drawer as he searches for something. Then I see the spark of a match.
“You should be used to the nighttime curfew by now, Albie,” he replies, lighting a candle and carrying it over to the table. “With the coal running out, the government’s still rationing the electricity supply. They might get to keep the power running for longer down in London, but up here, it’s still lights out by nine every night. Whether you’ve finished your cheese on toast or not.”
Dad puts the candle down on the table between us and picks up his last piece of toast. In the orange glow of the candlelight, I can see a worried frown on his face.
“Are you feeling all right, Albie?” he asks me. “You didn’t get a bang on your head while you were away, did you?”
I shake my head, but inside I’m kicking myself. Since I first climbed inside the cardboard box, I haven’t felt as at home as I do right now. I know that Mum’s still gone in this universe, but somehow Dad’s making up for it as best he can. But just by asking one wrong question I’ve almost given myself away. I need to clear my head before I say anything else that shows I d
on’t belong here.
“I’m fine, Dad,” I tell him quickly. “I could just do with some fresh air.”
Dad looks out the window, the sky now almost completely black and starting to sparkle with stars.
“How about we take the telescope out?” he says, clearing the plates away. “The moons should be coming out soon.”
—
As Dad sets the telescope up on the patio, I snuggle inside my—I mean, the Albie from this universe’s—fleece, the wind still whipping in from the moor, scudding clouds across the sky and making me shiver.
Behind me, the house lies in darkness. No electricity now until tomorrow morning. I know I should keep my mouth shut, but all the headlines I’ve read and what Dad’s said have put a tiny worm of worry that’s growing inside my head.
“Dad,” I say. “What will happen when the coal runs out?”
Dad looks up from the viewfinder on the telescope, his face half hidden in the shadows.
“I’ll have to get another job,” he jokes. “No point in going down in the mine if there’s nothing left to dig out.”
“But you’re a scientist,” I say.
“I wish,” Dad laughs. “You’re saying some funny things today, Albie. I’m a coal miner—just like your Granddad Joe was before he passed away.”
The last few words of Dad’s sentence hit me like an invisible punch in the gut. I’d wondered where Granddad Joe was in this parallel world, but hadn’t found the way to ask the question yet. Gone, just like Mum, and the universe seems to shrink a little bit more.
I thought quantum physics would help me put things right, but it just seems to be taking the people I love away from me over and over again. I bite my bottom lip to stop myself crying.
“Don’t worry, Albie,” Dad says, seeing the look on my face. “The government will find a way to make sure everything’s OK. Since the oil ran out a few years back, they’ve had teams of scientists looking for new sources of power. The coal will last for a few more years yet, and they’re bound to have worked something out by then.”
In another universe Dad has invented cold fusion—unlimited energy for free—but in this universe he’s just left sitting in the dark.
“Look,” Dad says, pointing up at the sky as his face is lit with a strange new light. “The moons have come out.”
The clouds are starting to clear, and as I look up into the night sky, I can’t believe my eyes. There are two full moons in the sky, hanging there side by side. I blink hard, thinking at first that I’m seeing double, but when I open my eyes again, they’re both still there. The words of my dad’s book echo in my mind. One tiny change…
“Two moons,” I breathe.
“Same as always.” Dad grins. “No need to act so surprised. Now, shall we see if we can spot where Armstrong and Gagarin landed on each one?”
Through the telescope Dad shows me the geography of Moon One and Moon Two. He points out the Sea of Tranquility and the Ocean of Storms, the Apennine Mountains and the Fra Mauro crater, where Dad says the Apollo 13 mission landed. The plains, valleys, craters, and mountains on Moon One all look so familiar to me. From what I can see, Moon One is a perfect twin to the moon I watched with Mum every night before she died.
But Moon Two has a strange blue-gray tint, and as I look through the telescope, I feel like I’m exploring a whole new world. Dad points out the Ocean of Uncertainty, where he tells me Yuri Gagarin touched down in the Lunar 3 lander. He shows me the Sea of Honey ringed by the Heisenberg Mountains and, in the middle of this, the huge Everett crater looking down on us like a giant eye. On this second moon everything seems different, the unfamiliar shadows giving the man in the moon a strange new face.
Drinking mugs of cocoa that Dad’s warmed up on the camping stove, we sit on the patio steps together beneath the two moons. With Dad sitting next to me, I feel like I’m finally home, but whenever I look up into the sky, I see a massive reminder that this isn’t my world.
“You know,” Dad says, sipping from his mug, “I bet your mum would’ve solved this energy crisis by now. She was always coming up with brilliant ideas. When you were a baby, we used to take you out for walks on the moors to get you to go to sleep, and while we were walking we’d chat about what we could do if the coal ever ran out. You’d be there in your buggy, your little toy windmill turning madly in the breeze, and your mum and I used to think up all these crazy schemes.
“Once I had the idea of building a chain of windmills stretching across the moor. I thought we could use the power of the wind to provide the energy that Clackthorpe would need to make its own electricity. I know it sounds like wishful thinking, but your mum thought it just might work.”
Dad drains his cocoa and then lets out a weary sigh. “But then she got ill, and there wasn’t any time for us to chase after such stupid dreams.”
I look up at Dad, the twin moons illuminating the sadness in his eyes as he stares up into the darkness. In another world he’s a scientist. In another universe he’s saved the world. And now he has the chance to do the same here.
“Why don’t we try to make it now?” I ask.
Dad stares back at me in surprise, then laughs out loud. In his eyes I see the same look the Dad in my universe has whenever he tries one of his crazy experiments on his TV show.
“OK,” he says with a grin. “Let’s do it.”
—
With candles and lanterns lighting up the workshop, we set to work. Dad’s taken the alternator out of Granddad Joe’s old Ford Ka, and it’s now sitting on the workbench waiting to be transformed into the generator for the wind turbine. I’m busy removing the back wheel and gears from “my” bike and hoping that the Albie in this universe won’t mind when he finds out.
On the workbench, Dad’s screwing together the windmill blades that he’s made out of the venetian blinds that were hanging in the kitchen. He’s cut these down to size, twisting and then screwing the slats together to give each blade extra strength. As he finishes the last one, he steps over to help me pull the back wheel of the bike free, lifting it up onto the workbench, ready to fix the windmill blades into place.
“So you really think this is going to work?” he asks me.
I nod excitedly as Dad starts to bolt each of the blades to the back wheel.
“It’s the energy of the future,” I tell him, thinking of the wind turbines I see stretching across the moors in my universe. “And the best thing is, it’ll never run out.”
The clock on the wall of the shed says it’s almost midnight. I don’t think I’ve slept for nearly twenty-four hours, and in that time I’ve traveled to three parallel universes, met different versions of myself, stolen an animatronic platypus, and busted out some old-school hip-hop moves. But the funny thing is, as Dad and I work together to fit the wind turbine’s pulleys and gears into place, I don’t feel tired at all.
All I’ve ever wanted is for Dad to stop racing around the world and spend some time with me. Not a part-time dad, but a proper dad who’s there when I need him. A dad who listens to what I say, just like Mum did. Now, in this world that has two moons shining down outside, I’ve finally got what I want.
—
I look up at the top of the shed where Dad has attached our homemade wind turbine. The windmill blades and bicycle wheel are silhouetted by the blue-gray globe of Moon Two as it slowly starts to set.
“Ready?” Dad asks.
I nod as he reaches up to flick a switch. As the windmill blades turn and the bike wheel spins, the fairy lights we’ve hung everywhere suddenly light up the garden, instantly turning night into day.
“It works,” Dad says, shaking his head in wonder. “Your mum always said it would. With enough of these wind turbine things, we could generate enough electricity to power the whole village. Maybe even the whole world.” He turns toward me with a grin. “We did it, Albie!”
Suddenly I feel incredibly tired. I want to tell Dad how happy I am, but all that comes out when I open my mouth is a ma
ssive yawn.
“Come on,” Dad says, putting his arm around my shoulder. “That’s enough saving the world for one night. Let’s get you to bed.”
In the corner of the attic room, I can see my cardboard box tucked under the eaves, the quantum banana experiment hidden safely inside.
I sit down on the edge of the bed, barely able to keep my eyes open.
“Straight to sleep now, Albie,” Dad says, standing in the doorway. “We’ll have plenty of time to work out what to do with our invention tomorrow. Maybe we can go down to London and show it to the government scientists who are working on the energy crisis. Let them know we’ve found a possible solution at last.”
“That sounds great, Dad,” I tell him, fighting back another yawn. “It’s been a brilliant day.”
Dad smiles.
“Your mum was right,” he says. “When we stick together, we can do anything.”
Then he quietly closes the bedroom door, leaving me alone in the dark.
I sit there for a second, staring up at the twin moons through the skylight. I know the Albie in this universe is due back from his school trip tomorrow. I should get off the bed and climb inside my cardboard box. But I’m just too tired, and I can’t stop myself from lying down. I just need to rest my eyes for a minute….
—
“Dad, I’m home!”
The sound of my own voice coming up the stairs wakes me up out of the deepest sleep I’ve ever known. For a second I don’t know where I am. Then I see the poster of the solar system hanging above my bed—two moons in orbit around the planet Earth.
Now I remember. This isn’t my bedroom. This isn’t even my universe.
Dad’s voice floats up the stairs in reply.
“Albie,” he says, and I can hear the surprise in his voice from here. “I didn’t expect to see you up so early after we had such a late night. I’ve just been out in the garden to check on the wind turbine. It’s still working.”
“The wind what?”
I jump off the bed, scrambling toward the cardboard box that’s tucked under the eaves. I can’t stay here any longer. That’s not my dad downstairs. I’ve only had him on loan.
The Many Worlds of Albie Bright Page 10